The present invention relates to a receiving apparatus and method, a recording medium, and a program and, more particularly, to a receiving apparatus and method, a recording medium, and a program which are capable of preventing personal information from being leaked when a script attached to an electronic mail is executed in an unauthorized manner.
Systems which send and receive text-based data via networks, or so-called electronic mail systems, are currently in wide use.
A receiving apparatus which has received an electronic mail (hereafter sometimes referred to simply as mail) displays the received mail in the form of text.
Sometimes, a sender of an electronic mail may require its recipient to take some action.
Japanese Patent Laid-open Nos. 2000-47955 and Hei 11-65964 disclose systems for sending and receiving data for use in the execution of an application program by attaching the data to an electronic mail to cause its recipient to execute some processing or take some action.
If the sender of an electronic mail can cause its recipient to take actions desired by the sender as described above, the sender with malicious intent can cause the recipient to take some action which is not desired by the recipient.
For example, the sender can retrieve as desired confidential personal information of the recipient which the recipient wants to keep confidential.